Call for evidence: Principles for a good digital society

The British Academy’s Digital Society policy programme draws upon the Social Sciences, Humanities and the Arts for People and the Economy (the ‘SHAPE’ disciplines) to explore the ways in which digital technologies, tools, and practices shape and are shaped by our society, and to address the questions of what makes for a good digital society and how policymakers can navigate the digital society in the coming decade. 

The Digital Society programme is a multi-year programme around ‘What makes a good digital society?’, with four consecutive stages of work:

• Possibilities; what are the possibilities of a good digital society?
• Principles; what are the principles that underpin a good digital society?
• Processes; what are the processes and mechanisms available to implement the principles of a good digital society?
• Practices; what does a good digital society look like in practice?

Following the publication of our discussion paper series on the 'possibilities' of a good digital society, the British Academy is opening a call for evidence on the principles that might underpin a good digital society. The Academy’s public policy team is conducting a mapping exercise of the landscape of principles – across contexts including policy, academia and research, industry, and civil society and at both national and international scales – for ‘good’ digital or AI policy, design, or innovation.

The purpose of the call is to gather relevant evidence about the existing landscape of principles for a good digital society. The public policy team plan to analyse and synthesise this material for a document that will map out the principles currently being used across sectors and set out the unique value of the SHAPE disciplines in thinking about principles for a good digital society.

By principles, we are broadly referring to a group of statements or ideas that can collectively provide the normative foundation for approaches to the development of policy mechanisms for a good digital society. Principles are not necessarily prescriptive, nor are they the same as policy recommendations; they are not themselves a policy approach but may underpin an approach.

Relevant principles may be ones that characterise a good digital society, or, alternatively, may guide strategies or means to realise a good digital society. We understand that what is good will be conceived of in different ways and vary across disciplines, as our work on 'possibilities' has shown. From a broad policy-oriented perspective, we expect most understandings of a good digital society would suggest that digital technologies should have a positive social purpose, with widely shared benefits and without causing harm to the wellbeing of people across society.

If you would like to respond to this call, please fill out the form below and send it to [email protected] by 17:00 on Monday 31 March 2025.

If you have any queries, please do contact Alex Mankoo ([email protected]) or Jonny Digby ([email protected]).